Challenges, needs and opportunities of American strawberry growers

Jayesh Samtani of Virginia Tech and Curt Rom of the University of Arkansas have made a review of all the challenges, needs and opportunities of strawberry growers across the United States. Samtani and Rom formed and gathered support from a team of 12 researchers from 10 different states as they generated an effective guideline essential for research, policy and marketing strategies for the strawberry industry across the country.

Their findings are summarized in the article "The Status and Future of the Strawberry Industry in the United States", an open-access article published in HortTechnology.

The review divides the United States into eight distinct geographic regions, and an indoor controlled or protected environment production system. A common trend across all regions is the increasing use of protected culture strawberry production with both day-neutral and short-day cultivars for season extension to meet consumer demand for year-round availability.

The United States produces more than 3 billion pounds of strawberries each year, providing almost 20% of the world crop, and is a global leader in production per unit area. The farm gate economic value of strawberries is just shy of $3 billion per year. With that monetary strength, the US production acreage has increased approximately 17% steadily since 1990, with the largest expansion in Florida and California.